Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry
Day 37
Monday 21 July 2014
Day 37 Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry 21 July 2014: Only
Session
In the only session of Day 37 of the Leeds Trolleybus
Public Enquiry, 21 July 2014, Mr Bill McKinnon for Friends of Woodhouse Moor
cross examines Mr Speak of Planning for Leeds City Council on planning issues
around the trolleybus and green space provision which would be affected on
Woodhouse Moor.
Today’s extra session was inserted in order to squeeze a
little more out of the timetable and at the same time allow Mr Bill McKinnon to
attend at a time which would be convenient for his work.
Mr Speak is one of the very few actual representatives of
Leeds City Council at the Enquiry, most are subcontracted through various
consultancies such as Mott MacDonald, Stear Davies Gleave (SDG) and others.
However, unfortunately the cross examination seemed to be
something of a slippery eel which rarely managed to pin down a great deal
because so much of what was being asked about was apparently outside of the
remit of Planning Policy. I myself
found this abstruse in the extreme.
My own view of some years is that bureaucracy is one of
the principle and most successful works of the devil. Like some kind of scene from a Franz Kafka novel one is never
quite able to pin down the exact person able to answer the exact question one
has in mind.
One might have thought that policy documents which say
certain green spaces should be protected would be sufficient to ensure that
such green spaces remained unthreatened.
However, so far as I understood the dialogue this is not actually the
case. In their ongoing epidemic of
newspeak which allows for such things all those features along the route which
we thought were protected by being in Conservation Areas, or in policy
documents would be swept away by a Transport Works Order should it be granted.
I’m afraid that as far as connecting with the field that a
witness is focussed on goes, this
one has left me somewhat hanging.
Perhaps it is my own particular way of thinking which makes this subject
opaque to me or perhaps there is an element of the planners creating their
little elite universe with their elaborated language that those outside of
their specialist club aren’t intended to understand.
But, as the saying goes, this is not brain surgery. I hold a view strongly that things which can
be put into everyday language which most people could understand should
be. It felt evasive to me as Mr Speak peered
out from under his shaggy Dulux dog fringe hanging over his spectacles and I
was inclined to wonder if he could possibly be more vague and obscure if he
tried.
It may well be the case that many of the questions that Mr
McKinnon put were outside of the specialist field of the witness, but as so
often has been the case one is left wondering who one should be able to ask
them to, and the answer is not always clear.
One of the reasons I have yet to write a blog on Friday’s
proceedings is that it was in many ways like today for me at least, feeling
that it was all a long way round for Mr Speak to say that the Planning
Department had decided that it was essential to have a trolleybus on this route
and so they supported it. I can feel
some questions about consultation brewing in the background as, if I can
paraphrase Disraeli, there seem to be ‘views, damned views and judgements.’
But I regret you aren’t going to get the
greatest of sense out of me on this witness because he seems to have taken
opacity to the level of an art form. I
have to confess that I am all hyped up and expectant for the main event of the
week, at least in my own opinion, of Gregory Jones QC having a day tomorrow in
which to cross examine Mr Neil Chadwick, another gentleman who is fond of
vaguing things up a bit when the scrutiny gets close. I can hear the calls of ‘Answer the
question, Mr Chadwick’ already!
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